Day 3 - Web Search Date- 7th July, 2015

Familiarization on Web searching and its benefits was the main focus on today’s lesson. Web searching was looking for information on internet that helps us in particular use.

The popular search engines used today are Google, Bing and Yahoo. The results displayed are typically prioritized by relevance, so those who search the Web can quickly find material that is relevant to their needs. Without a search engine, finding information and resources on the Internet is very difficult, especially when specific servers and domains containing desired information are unknown.

Introduction of Operators when using search engines introduced to us were; 

Boolean Operators are simple words (AND, OR, NOT or AND NOT) used as conjunctions to combine or exclude keywords in a search, resulting in more focused and productive results. This should save time and effort by eliminating inappropriate hits that must be scanned before discarding.

Using AND operators The AND & OR operators are used to filter records based on more than one condition. The AND operator displays a record if both the first condition AND the second condition are true.

Using Truncation

Truncation, also called stemming, is a technique that broadens your search to include various word endings and spellings. To use truncation, enter the root of a word and put the truncation symbol at the end.

• Examples:
  child* = child, childs, children, childrens, childhood
  genetic* = genetic, genetics, genetically
• Truncation symbols may vary by database; common symbols include: *, !, ?, or #

Using  Wildcards:

Similar to truncation, wildcards substitute a symbol for one letter of a word.

• This is useful if a word is spelled in different ways, but still has the same meaning

Using site operators

We were also enhanced on how to carry out complete search omitting the www. and instead adding specified domain. For example, a search for site:bbc.com would encompass not just www.bbc.com, but also news.bbc.com, sports.bbc.com, and so on. The site: search operator works even when just the domain extension (like .com, .org, .gov, or .co.uk) is specified. Thus, we can restrict our search to .com sites with site:com, to .gov sites with site:gov, or to .org.bt.  

Searching by format  

we can restrict our search to Word documents, to Excel documents, to PDF files, or to PowerPoint files by adding filetype:doc, filetype:xls, filetype:pdf, or filetype:ppt, respectively, to your search query.

If we want a PowerPoint presentation on How to integrate ICT in subject  Simply query Google for “Diagonals and Symmetry filetype:ppt”

Towards the end of today’s lesson we were briefed on the benefits of using Google application and Google help centre. Google Books is a Google service that makes discovering book content easier for us on the web.